A Moment From My Day

I got totally stopped in my tracks today ... by the color green. It was a leaf. A green leaf. It's funny how the most unexpected things can catch you sometimes. For me, today, it was a leaf. I was out on my morning walk, and my head was in a million places ... which happens when you move. Or, I should say, when I move. When I move, I usually find that I'm not totally present where I am, and yet, I'm also not present where I'm going to end up. And my head seems to compensate for that lack of presence by being in all the space in between the two.

So, there I am, walking, with my all over the place head, and I notice a leaf as I walk past. And there was just something about the green of it ... it was this very alive, vibrant green, and it was just THERE, BEING. And it literally stopped me, that color, and I just stood there for a minute, looking at it.

I've been thinking a lot lately about BEING versus DOING. I got to thinking about it during that last week of grad school (maybe some of that homework paid off after all!) as I was contemplating God as BEING, versus God as DOING. And, in my reading, I came across this fabulous passage by a Brazilian theologian named Leonardo Boff. I've been chewing on his words ever since, and so I think I'm gonna jot them down here ... you know, in case you'd like to chew with me:

Boff writes, "...So God is best represented as a living, an action eternally "producing" the divine reality, making it manifest, with no need to reply to the question: why live? God lives to live, in absolute spontaneity, in the self-evident meaning of light that shines to shine, clear spring water that gushes to gush, the bird that sings to sing..."

I've read that passage over and over again and am finding so much freedom in it. For much of my 20s, I struggled to figure out what I was supposed to do with my life. And I still get bogged down, sometimes, with all the decisions that surround planning and general life organization/strategy. But, then I read passages like this, and it wakes me up again. Could it be that I -- like my Creator -- live to live? Is it enough simply that I sing to sing, and dance to dance, and write to write, and love to love, and cook to cook, and listen to listen, and breathe to breathe? Could it be that God smiles at our BEING, just like He IS? There's something about this idea that feels very "whole" to me.

I'm not dissing DOING. I know there's a place in life for DOING. If none of us DID, well, there wouldn't be much. DOING is important. I have to move for example. I have to. Or perfect strangers will invade my bedroom and carry me out. And so, I have to make plans, look for new housing, search for jobs. These are all valid and important DOINGS.

But today, as I was walking along, planning and thinking and just generally mulling lots of ideas over and over in my head, green reached out and grabbed me, and anchored me back into the here and now. I stopped and stared at that leaf, at its intricate system of veins, at its beautiful bold color. And I was still for a few moments. And my soul took a good, long breath.

I'm coming to believe that life is this beautiful, endless cycle of doing and being. And when we fall too far to one side of that equation, sometimes green will reach out and grab us.